I never wander far from homewhile the sun peels paint from twenty-year oldsiding or the blood of rust trickles offbillboards over on Cheney highway.Everything changes these old markersyear by lonesome year – the cocoonof marriage fattens itself with more bindingwith no hope of the silk splittingnot even when the morning glory wagsits blue trumpet and then is gone.Forgetting greedy birds, I try bread crumbs,bits of colored paper as I forget the brisk windin this dry season. The numbers on the housesnever look the same coming back. You’ve givenme a map, a compass, a goodbye kiss and onceI traveled all the way to the river and back.I bake gingerbread in my spare time,mix frosting for mortar. You helped me installwindows of spun sugar. Soon, I won’thave to venture out. Already, people stop.

The poet’s use of the fairytale here is enhanced by both local imagery that rings true (“billboard over on Cheney highway”) and odd statements like “The numbers on the houses/never look the same coming back.” There is something here I want to question, even argue with, but the poet acts out Gretel’s refusal to engage with the sureness of the penultimate claim, “Soon, I won’t/have to venture out….” --Deborah Bogen

Second Place

Parableby Allen Weberconjunction

Uncle fell for a migrant girl,as hard as an Alcatraz rose,then perished with the harvest moon.

So wading through the wait-a-bitsat the edge of a freshly turned fieldGrandma searched sad furrows of earth.

There’s no competing with Sorrow,Child. Still unschooled in transience,I asked if she meant to say, Love.

Don’t become what happens to you.When the springtime plow turns loosea bone, remember why it’s best

to keep a girl who knows how deepto put the beast that winter killed.

Here is another poem that invokes an ancient story mode (“Uncle fell for a migrant girl,/ as hard as an Alcatraz rose,”) to say something current and biting (“Don’t become what happens to you./When the springtime plow turns loose/ a bone….”) --Deborah Bogen

Third Place

The Oneby Kendall WitherspoonThe Waters

I was just sixteen that eight-track Marchthaw when I lied to your face, jumpeda Michigan highway fence with my red-eyedfriend Tommy, the one with the goldenthumb, the one with Edgar Winter’s hair,the one who taught me about casting seedsupon the ground, the one without a motherto lie to and a drunken father whose backyardbeagles bayed along runways while his onlyson hitchhiked under the trails of jets.

In Ft. Lauderdale we slept under bridgeswith the adept girl from Athens, Georgia.The one with a woven palm crown,the one in the fluorescent orange bikini,the one who called William Calley a hero,the one who stole the sweater you knitted me,after she did that guitar-boy for a song.Later you said you dreamed of me sleepingunder cars, or abducted at a Winn Dixieadopted by homeless Vietnam vets.

I reminded you of your brother then.The one who ran to that Louisiana townwithout his third wife and his lucky red truck.The one who drank coffee in his vodka.The one who owned the laundromatwith the peeling sign on brick, shoutingwhites and coloreds welcome here.The one who played piano by ear, you said.The one I met when he was dead of cancer.The one I take after, everyone says.

The rhythm, the pace, the dense imagery kept me reading about this difficult and unresolved coming-of age. This is the one that made me love the repetition of “the one.” --Deborah Bogen

Logged

Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment. ~ Ira Gassen